


Tea for Two

by osprey_archer



Category: Black Widow (Movie 2020), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: After the helicarriers fall, Natasha goes to an old friend to bargain for the Winter Soldier's file.Yelena isdelightedto have this chance to gloat.
Relationships: Yelena Belova/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 29
Kudos: 59





	Tea for Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cravetherose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cravetherose/gifts).



"Oh, Natasha," Yelena said. "You always wanted to be a good girl."

They were sitting in Yelena’s kitchen, sipping tea out of the only two cups that had survived their customary brawl. Broken china littered the floor, as well as dirt from a cracked flowerpot. The former denizen of the flowerpot, a Christmas cactus, had been rescued into a saucepan, only slightly dented from Yelena’s attempt to smash it over Natasha’s face. 

Natasha, bruised and sore from the fall of SHIELD, had not ducked quite fast enough. A layperson wouldn’t have known, but Natasha knew that Yelena had modified her blow at the last moment so the saucepan smashed against the doorframe rather than Natasha’s head. 

The blow had nonetheless knocked Natasha against the doorframe, too. She had hit her shoulder: the one where the Winter Soldier had shot her. That had really hurt. 

But all in all, it was one of Yelena’s less convincing assassination attempts. 

Yelena topped off Natasha’s untouched teacup. Steam billowed from the cup, a brief ghost in the sunlight. “You were always such a suck-up,” Yelena mused. “The way you used to watch CNN to practice your English, just to please Miss Underwood. Of course it backfired, didn’t it? If you hadn’t consumed so much trashy American propaganda, maybe you wouldn’t have been such an easy mark for Hydra. Oops! I mean SHIELD.” 

Yelena was grinning in the manner the Americans called “shit-eating.” Natasha lifted her teacup (her injured shoulder protested even this small movement) and sipped the tea in some slight hope that Yelena had poisoned it. It was certainly bitter enough. 

“How does it feel to know you left the Red Room to work for the Nazis?” Yelena asked. 

Natasha took up a tea cake studded with walnuts, bursting with raspberry jam. She took a bite. It tasted like everything had tasted since the fall of SHIELD. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. “I feel fine.” 

“Bullshit. It’s eating you alive.”

Natasha pulled a little face and sipped her tea again. SHIELD was gone – and not only gone, it had never been what she thought it was. It had always been bad, worse than the Red Room, even. At least no one in the Red Room had ever designed genocidal space lasers. 

Hydra’s algorithm hadn’t even seen her as a threat. 

Yelena’s hand touched hers. Natasha hadn’t even noticed Yelena moving, and this failure of vigilance felt like a cave-in in her chest. If she wasn’t even competent anymore, what the hell did she have left? 

Yelena’s warm fingers pressed Natasha’s hand. On their very first mission together, a trek through Antarctica that was designed to kill them both (not that anyone saw them as a threat then; their deaths were meant to undermine Miss Underwood’s position), Natasha would have lost her fingers if Yelena had not warmed Natasha’s hands between hers. 

Yelena removed her hand from Natasha’s and leaned back in her chair. “Remember when you tried to convince me to defect? Abandon the Red Room, you said. Join SHIELD. Go straight. That’s one way,” Yelena mused, “to describe ramming your tongue down Captain America’s throat on an escalator.”

Natasha’s hand felt cold. She slouched back in her chair too, although the movement pulled at her shoulder. “Jealous?” 

Yelena’s eyelids flickered. She had green eyes, light green, or light blue in the right light. Natasha always thought it was a beautiful color. 

“I can’t believe STRIKE fell for such a cheap trick,” Yelena said. “So amateur hour. But I suppose when you are recruiting an elite force of ideologically committed rogue Nazis, you can’t expect too much competence. Didn’t you ever notice anything off about them?”

Natasha took another sip of tea. Her hand was steady. “Enough gloating, Yelena. Show me the file.” 

Yelena made an exaggerated moue. “Natka, I’m hurt. You’ve come all this way to see your dear Yelena and you don’t even want to talk?”

“I don’t have time to sit around and chat if you don’t have the file.” 

“I told you I have the file. You don’t trust me?” 

“I don’t trust anyone,” Natasha said.

Maybe if she said it enough times, eventually it would come true. 

Yelena’s eyelids drooped, half-veiling her eyes in that peculiar cat-like way she had. When they were eight, it usually meant she was about to jump all your men in a checkers game. Now – “You were so proud,” Yelena said, “that Fury trusted you.” 

Pain spasmed through Natasha’s body as her jaw clenched. “I could just break your neck and search your apartment for the file.”

Yelena laughed. “I told you when you betrayed us for SHIELD that no one ever trusts a traitor, Natasha.” 

Fury had gone to Steve with the flash drive – _Steve_ , who was useless with technology. 

At least Fury hadn’t told Steve about his failsafe plan to fake his own death. It wasn’t so bad losing out to Maria. 

“How brave of you to have me here, then.” 

“Oh, you know me. I like playing with fire.” Yelena pushed her chair back. “I’ll go get it.” 

The broken china crunched under Yelena’s feet. Natasha slumped back in her seat, breathing slowly to release the ache that had built up in her shoulder. Her head had begun to pound dully. 

Yelena returned with the folder. She tossed it carelessly on the kitchen table. Natasha eyed it, feeling almost too weary to move. “Did you stuff this one with a Russian translation of _The Cat in the Hat_ , too?”

Yelena giggled shamelessly. “The look on your face when you opened that file.”

“The look on yours when I nearly shot you.” Natasha couldn’t put any heat in the words. She was too tired to pretend any longer that she wanted Yelena dead. She pulled the file toward her and flipped it open. 

There he was: the Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes. Steve’s best friend, who dragged him out of the Potomac and dropped him on the riverbank with a gunshot wound in his stomach. 

Friendship was just like that. 

“What are you going to do when they miss this file?” Natasha asked. 

“That’s none of your business.” 

It wasn’t, of course. Yelena had stopped being Natasha’s business a long time ago. 

They sat in silence. Natasha sipped her tea: cold now. The bitterness was almost unbearable without the heat. 

“Time to discuss payment,” Yelena reminded her. 

Natasha stirred, reaching for her briefcase. “I brought along…” 

But Yelena lifted a hand to stop her. “I want a kiss.” 

Natasha looked at Yelena. “You’re joking.”

“What else do you have that is worth anything?” Yelena asked. “You already dropped SHIELD’s databases on the internet.” 

“That wasn’t for you.”

“No.” Yelena’s voice was as bitter as the tea. “Nothing you do is ever for me.” A little silence; and then Yelena said, “Kiss me like you used to. That’s my price.” 

“Hoping to get me close enough to stab me?”

“Oh, Natasha.” Natasha couldn’t quite read Yelena’s tone. “You are already close enough for me to stab you.” 

Natasha used only her uninjured arm to lever herself to her feet, but nonetheless it hurt to stand. She moved around the table to Yelena, who remained sprawled in her chair, legs spread like a man taking up three subway seats. That posture always drove Miss Underwood to distraction. 

Natasha lifted her hands to Yelena’s cheeks, still as soft and round as when they were six-year-olds new to the Red Room. Yelena lifted her chin, meeting Natasha’s eyes, challenging. Yelena’s blue-green eyes looked almost gray in the dim apartment. 

Yelena blinked when Natasha kissed her. 

Natasha had forgotten, Natasha now remembered, the softness of Yelena’s lips, the little sigh of a breath that Yelena drew in just after a kiss. Memory seemed to possess her body: Natasha’s hand slid into Yelena’s blonde hair, her legs propelled her to straddle Yelena’s lap, and Yelena’s warm hands were on Natasha’s hips, stroking the powerful curve of her waist, curling around her back, pulling Natasha into an embrace that endured even after Natasha broke the kiss. They sat in the circle of each other’s arms (when had Natasha’s arms risen to embrace Yelena?) and stared at each other. 

Natasha’s body still ached. But the pain felt far away, and Yelena close and warm. 

“Yelena,” Natasha began, and had nothing else to say. 

“ _Rodnaya,_ ,” Yelena said, and touched a silencing finger to Natasha’s lips. It was an endearment with no direct English translation, from the same root as _Rodina_ : the Motherland. “I knew you would come back to me.”

“I’m not staying,” Natasha insisted. 

“Not now,” Yelena agreed. “Not this time.” 

“Not ever.”

“We’ll see.” 

Natasha removed herself from Yelena’s lap. The broken china crunched under her boots as she moved back to her side of the table. She touched the file, the teacup, took a quick sip of the cold bitter tea. 

“It wasn’t because I didn’t love you,” Natasha said. “That wasn’t why I left.” 

“No,” Yelena agreed. “Of course that has nothing to do with it. Love is very weak.” 

Natasha checked the file again. Yelena had once brought the right file and then switched out the contents before Natasha left the meeting. One cover page with actual information and then the first three chapters of Dostoevsky’s _The Idiot_. 

Yelena hadn’t tampered with the Winter Soldier’s file, though. Natasha flipped all the way through to be sure, then stowed it in her briefcase. 

Then she looked up at Yelena. “Come with me.” 

Yelena’s eyes widened. She looked, for a moment, almost wistful. But then she shook her head. “Come back some time when you have healed and we can have a proper fight.” 

“If you came with me,” Natasha said, “we could fight every day, if you wanted.” 

“Oh, Natasha.” Yelena shook her head again. The wistfulness intensified; then she looked away. “It wouldn’t be the same.”


End file.
